Are we leaders?

Are we leaders?

 

Whilst recently in the US I was given a pretty awful book on leadership written by one of the glitterati of the Evangelical world. I'd name and shame but I'd only get battered. When I say awful it was full of common sense but most of it was total gobbledegook; 'working your platform', 'establishing a presence in social media', 'have your own section on the website' - 'you are the leader, people want to hear your opinion. Be the leader you can be', and all that jazz. Occasional Bible verses thrown in and lots of anecdotes. It didn't say 'feed your massive ego', but it came pretty close. As I finished the book I thought 'Ah, America!' but also alongside that was the nagging fear about how bad a leader I am.  I recently spoke somewhere where they asked me about how I'd 'cast my vision' at IPC over the last 10 years. It took everything in me to restrain me from strangling the interviewee with the microphone lead.

 

Anyway, this past week I have been reading Donald Macleod's outstanding essay from the Scottish Evangelical Bulletin on 'elders and deacons' I found this which gladdened my heart no end:  'A protestant minister is neither priest nor Christian leader. The only Leader is Christ; and the true deacon, preacher or elder is great only in his service and in his incessant toil. He will never assume that, simply because he is a 'clerical' person, ordinary Christians should salute him.'